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Month: July 2013

Summer has avoided Duluth this year and looking for any reason to travel, seeking summer seemed good enough. Of course for me Paris is always the answer so I checked the weather and sure enough they were having summer in Paris.

Here I am again. City for lovers, my ass. City of beautiful people, hands down!

It’s funny I am always so excited to go, I love to travel, yet when I hit the ground and the reality of how alone I can feel with jet lag out the ass, my reclusive button gets hit and it can be hard to leave my room. But, since this is not my first time here I gave myself a stern talking to and headed out the door. Geez, Leanne.

I figured that the best way to deal with this travelers fear was to head to the Eiffel Tower, totally a tourist destination. There I could get lost in the crowd. I was thinking of going to the top and thank God it was temporarily closed, I mean really how much fear does one person need to deal with, so instead, I sat on a bench and just watched the endless parade of people.

Awww humans. I have been told over and over again that I think too much. I am very aware of myself. As I sat and watched the people go by I realized that most humans are walking around asleep. They are not paying any attention to anything around them. I am not sure I get it. Most are looking down at their devices. So many vacant expressions like they are walking around but not in their bodies. There they are in one of the most awesome places in the world and its long faces, screaming kids and how much longer do we have to be here.

It didn’t take long for perspective to show up. I saw so much when I looked in their faces that it pulled me right out of my revelry. There was every manner of human in those crowds; parents, kids, players, crooks, beautiful humans, lots of awkward humans and humans who have no understanding of a mirror, homeless excluded. What I saw was everyone looking for some kind of connection. Everyone is looking for love and to be needed, wanted, seen. Its written on everyone’s face. Why should it bother me if it’s on mine?

I become one of the crowd and filled with the knowing that there are as many lonely people walking in the city as there are couples and families I stood up and began my walk back. A peace came over me and it just didn’t matter anymore that I was still alone and had no one to share all this awesomeness with. I just became so filled with gratefulness that I was there.

I headed for the subway to return to my hotel and a woman stopped me for directions, in French. In one second I went from being a lonely tourist to a resident of France, Paris France no less, how cool is that?

Like this:

One of my earlier spiritual beliefs was whenever I met resistance on the path it was a sign that I was going the wrong way. I felt it was essentially a stop sign by the creator to alert me to wrong doings, wrong actions, wrong direction. Sometimes it felt like the resistance I was experiencing, was a way to slow me down so I could assess how the ‘what’ I was doing, was actually playing out on the stage of reality. Resistance was a tool of reflection, a reaction to the cause of my actions. No matter what kind of resistance I felt I would always look out into the world to see where it was coming from, then I felt like I could address it.

Once I made the determination that my path was my path, resistance became something else. Rather than looking at resistance as something to react against, I began to look at it as a spiritual lesson. Resistance then became a, “do you really mean it?” kind of thing. A new understanding of resistance as being a marker to how dedicated one is on the path rather than a marker that something was wrong.

At first it was hard for me to see the difference between accessing resistance as a sign of how things were going to the thought of resistance being a marker to how dedicated one is to their truth. For me most of the time resistance was a wall I slammed into and had to find a way around but really it was a wall I needed to walk through. When I say I desire a spiritual path and then am pushed right off my path by any level of resistance well, that hardly seems to be the definition of following a spiritual path. It makes me think of Job from the bible, he met some resistance on his path and held it together. The resistance he felt didn’t weaken his resolve. I sure couldn’t let it weaken mine.

I am getting ready to travel which causes lots of stress and my oldest son who is bi-polar can have a hard time when I am away. The resistance of the last 2 days almost had me cancelling my plans. The resistance has been so bad, instead of looking like resistance, it looked like the end of the world. There were missed appointments, car accidents, dogs running away, cells phones failing, checkbook failure, every where I looked things were falling apart, or trying really hard to. I even let it get to the point of almost cancelling my trip.

And then I stood up. Like a wave you move with, rather than against, I began to see the resistance as pot holes in the road, a pain in the ass but hardly a reason not to drive. I look down at the writing on my arm, Be still and know that I am God and take a deep breath. There is going to be resistance on the path, it is the way it is. Humans have fear and resistance is just a thing we have to deal with until we know better. Running from it, or being afraid of it does not fix it, you just have to let go and let life flow. Then you become like a boulder in the water something the wave moves around not pushes around. You become an unstoppable force.

I wish I was the internal version of myself. The me on the other side of the mirror. You know the me that is so perfect. Her hair is always perfect. Her clothes are always right. Her weight never fluctuates. She never over drinks, or over eats and she never talks to loud for God sakes! She gets up every morning with a smile on her face sipping her cup of herbal tea, no caffeine for her. She does yoga effortlessly and is in touch with her higher self. You should see how awesome she is. She rarely gets angry and is a great help to everyone. She is selfless and generous. My life would be perfect! Right?

Really!

I get a glimpse of her sometimes trying to be me and frankly she gets on my nerves with her always right shit. “You really shouldn’t eat that” raining on my parade with her “right” thoughts and “right ” behavior. She never gives me a break. She sits inside of me being this perfected version of myself. She has been haunting me for years. Problem is she has been trying to get me to “see” something.

I have just reread Eckhart Tolle’s book “The Power of Now”. (READ THIS BOOK) A great book stating simply that our unhappiness can be found in our resisting the present moment or our lives at any given time. We will be stuck in thoughts of the future or past, never the now. And now is where all the action is. The one place no one wants to be. Can you imagine that most people that surround you are completely living in the past or future. That is not reality. It is not now.

This internal perfected view of myself is a trick of my ego to keep me upset with the me of right now. I become worried endlessly about my weight, my kids, my life, my lack of a life, my lack of a love life, whatever might be upsetting in my life situation at any given moment. My perfected self judges endlessly, it is not reflective of the real me. It is just a version of me and my life that I sometimes hold onto as “right”. It keeps me constantly upset rather than allowing me to revel in the beauty of the present moment. This “right” self becomes a false self.

We are hiding behind a “right” version of ourselves becoming scared of exposing our true selves. This feels very similar to only showing a part of yourself to your parents so they will be proud of you thinking that if they saw your true self they would never speak to you again. The false self is a mother fu*ker and constantly changes so you are never right and always wrong, see it’s a mother fu*ker! Destroying peace everywhere.

When I daydream of my perfected false self, dancing in harmony with mother nature, not shaving her legs, smiling in her perfected beauty living her perfect life, I can also see me making fun of all of it. I laugh at women projected like that, smiling through their periods, and having orgasms through child-birth. Perfected females. I don’t think of them as being righter in their womanly experience as me, it’s just another version of experience, I guess, it sure as hell wasn’t mine. This female body went through hell bringing 3 kids onto the planet and the battle scars are still visible 30 some years later.

This is my present moment self with all my horrifying life experiences and bad habits standing up to be counted. This is my now. In the present moment of now everything is fine. Anything that is negative can be corrected through right thought and action and this can change your experience of now. But right now is right now and every minute is flowing in the eternal moment now. Being in the now is where life is flowing. When you are not in the moment life is moving around you. Resisting the present moment makes for a miserable life. Clear off your mirror and see. Stop identifying with your false self and just let your self be.

My perfected self better watch herself because this version of me is going to kick her ass, false self out, true self in!